Global brands spend hundreds of billion of dollars annually in the United States on brand marketing and communications. Over the last decade, an increasing percentage of brand marketing budgets have been spent in direct marketing channels (e.g., direct mail, telemarketing, email, etc.). In fact, total brand spending on direct mail now exceeds that of broadcast television. Given direct marketing's unique capabilities, such as precise targeting, the ability to drive specific behaviors, and highly measurable results, marketers are expected to continue spending heavily in direct channels.
One of the most significant new direct marketing opportunities is the emergence of the wireless channel. The wireless channel provides marketers the unmatched ability to reach the individual (not just the household), in a time and event-sensitive way, with attractive and measurable marketing return on investment (“ROI”). In Europe, hundreds of brands are beginning to utilize the wireless data channels and are committing a sizeable portion of their communications budgets over the next year to wireless.
An organization wanting to use data messaging for communication with its user base needs to make it easy for them to participate. The organization needs to have a means to obtain a user's mobile device address to be able to communicate with him using his mobile device data capabilities. The organization needs to obtain the user permission to be able in the future to send new messages, coupons, offers or promotions, to the user's mobile devices.
There are multiple ways to for a user to initiate a communication with an organization and for an organization to obtain a user's mobile device address, but in this invention we are primarily focused on methods to initiate a communication when said user is in a mobile setting, such as a public environment as opposed to a home or office environment. In a mobile setting, there needs to be an easy and quick way for said user to specify his interest in starting a communication and for the organization to obtain said user's mobile device address whereby the communication can occur.
Once the communication is initiated, a message oriented application can capture the user's mobile device address in a database, and respond back with a message, a coupon, an offer or a promotion.
It is important that said user only receive future organization originated (“push”) communications only if he has elected to do so. A system and method to perform communication between users and organizations needs to support an easy way to either opt-in or opt-out from receiving future communications.
An example of a situation where a user may be interested in initiating a communication with an organization is the case of the organization being a brand sponsoring some event; for example a contest, building brand and product awareness where the user may win some prizes. Other examples include receiving offers, coupons, promotions or discounts on their mobile device.
The communication, its goals, its benefits and how a user can initiate it is typically displayed using a traditional channel such as print media, product packaging, bar coaster, bill-board, sign, posters, TV or radio advertisements, candy wraps, etc. . . . This process is called the “call to action” message. It is easy to see that if participating is easy to accomplish, such communications can have a wide impact for both users and organizations.
One very common application of this invention is to deliver coupons, offers and promotions to users that have requested them. There is a cost for an organization to provide, promote and deploy systems to execute such mobile coupon, offer and promotion programs. Hence it is an important requirement that a system be able to measure redemption rates to compute the effectiveness of the program. In addition, much better coupons, offers and promotions can be given to individual users if their past individual receptiveness is known—which makes uniquely identifying the coupon, offer and promotion important.
There is much economical value in being able to deploy a system where users can receive messages, coupons, offers and promotions at the time of their choosing as well as occasionally receiving push specials thereby allowing the organization running the program to develop a comprehensive loyalty program bringing value to both the user and the organization. To support such a program, a system needs to exist to, enable users to enroll, participate and receive occasional “push” messages, coupons, offers and promotions that leverages the capabilities of mobile data communication devices and Customer Relationship Management and Loyalty systems.
In addition, some of the offers, coupons and promotions can be valuable enough that the organization giving them out wants to make sure they are used only once. Examples of such compelling offers are very deep discount to join the offer program—think about book clubs that sell you your first three books for $1 to join the club. In this case, the offer needs to be verified that it has not already been redeemed. Such a step is critical with the technologies described in this invention where it is often easy to forward or forge a message on a mobile device.
The primary limitations with existing methods to initiate a communication between an organization and a user using a mobile device have to do with: the time, effort and lack of convenience of triggering the communication using current systems; the lack of common service addresses for users to initiate the communication with an organization in some common existing messaging technologies; and the lack of familiarity on the part of users on how to initiate a communication using their mobile device.